England's effort : $b Letters to an American friendWard, Humphry, Mrs.
History
England's effort : $b Letters to an American friend
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
Great Britain. Army -- Ordnance facilities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British; World War, 1914-1918 -- Women
The following morning we woke to a silvery sunlight, with, at last, some
promise of spring over a land cleared of snow. The day was spent in going
through a camp which has been set down in one of the pleasantest and
healthiest spots of France, a favourite haunt of French artists before the
war. Now the sandy slopes, whence the pines, alack, have been cut away,
are occupied by a British reinforcement camp, by long lines of hospitals,
by a convalescent depot, and by the training-grounds, where, as at other
bases, the newly arrived troops are put through their last instruction
before going to the front. As usual, the magnitude of what has been done
in one short year filled one with amazement. Here is the bare catalogue:
Infantry Base Depots, i.e. sleeping and mess quarters, for thousands of
men belonging to the new armies; 16 hospitals with 21,000 beds, 3 rifle
ranges; 2 training-camps; a machine-gun training-school; a vast laundry
worked by Frenchwomen under British organisation, which washes for _all_
the hospitals, 30,000 pieces a day; recreation huts of all types and
kinds, official and voluntary; a Cinema theatre, seating 800 men, with
performances twice a day; nurses' clubs; officers' clubs; a Supply Depot
for food; an Ordnance Depot for everything that is not food; new sidings
to the railway, where 1,000 men can be entrained on the one side, while
1,000 men are detraining on the other; or two full ambulance trains can
come in and go out; a Convalescent Depot of 2,000 patients, and a
Convalescent Horse Depot of 2,000 horses, etcetera. And this is the work
accomplished since last April in one camp.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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